quotes from classic

Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.

more quotes from John Milton

To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable.

more quotes from John Milton

Love-quarrels oft in pleasing concord end.

more quotes from John Milton

The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.

more quotes from John Milton

I use rock and jazz and blues rhythms because I love that music. I hope my poetry has a relationship with good-time rock'n roll.

more quotes from Adrian Mitchell

I don't like writing essays or theory.

more quotes from Adrian Mitchell

Written poetry is different. Best thing is to see it in performance first, then read it. Performance is more provocative.

more quotes from Adrian Mitchell

I want to speak, to sing to total strangers. It's my way of talking to the world.

more quotes from Adrian Mitchell

I use the language I use to my friends. They wouldn't believe me if I used some high-flown literary language. I want them to believe me.

more quotes from Adrian Mitchell

Stadium rock and commercial rock are the opposite of what poetry needs. An audience of around 200 is ideal for poetry.

more quotes from Adrian Mitchell

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

Narrative art, the novel, from Murasaki to Proust, has produced great works of poetry.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

Poetry is the art which is technically within the grasp of everyone: a piece of paper and a pencil and one is ready.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

Man cannot produce a single work without the assistance of the slow, assiduous, corrosive worm of thought.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

Art is the production of objects for consumption, to be used and discarded while waiting for a new world in which man will have succeeded in freeing himself of everything, even of his own consciousness.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

Strangely, Dante's Divine Comedy did not produce a prose of that creative height or it did so after centuries.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

But poets were not considered dangerous and they were advised to exercise self-censorship. At most, poets were requested not to write at all. I took advantage of this negative liberty.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale

There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.

more quotes from Eugenio Montale